After Hours Read Online Free PDF Page B

employee lot, to a late model GM pickup, probably
     the same vintage as my car but far-better maintained. He came close to unlock my side,
     seeming taller than ever, seeming huge and looming but strangely reassuring. A breakwater
     to keep the storm of stress from washing me out to sea, never to be found. Maybe I
     could steal some of his bricks and fortify myself, so the next run-in with someone’s
     psychosis wouldn’t shake me so badly.
    He started up the truck, wipers knocking droplets from an afternoon shower off the
     windshield, headlights illuminating the sign posted at the head of each space that
     read, NEVER LEAVE YOUR KEYS IN YOUR VEHICLE!
    “Everyone in that ward’s had their own first day,” Kelly told me, driving up to the
     first of two security boxes that would let us exit the campus. He punched in a code,
     drove through, waited for the first automatic gate to shut before jabbing at the second
     keypad.
    “I know.”
    He turned us onto a narrow service road I hadn’t taken in.
    “I don’t want to make you feel worse, but that wasn’t such a terrible day to start.”
    “I know that, too. And I don’t want to be as upset as I am, by what Lonnie said. It’s
     not like he stabbed me or anything. It was a frigging
pizza crust
.”
    “But what he said slapped you across the face,” Kelly said. “So it’s fine to let it
     sting. Next time it won’t sting so hard, and soon enough the words won’t even hit
     you.”
    “I hope so.”
    “Just know that whatever anyone in there says to you when they’re having an episode,
     it’s not personal. You’re the just the face that was closest to theirs when the impulse
     hit. Like you happened to be walking by when they whipped a door open, and got clocked
     in the head.”
    I nodded, finding some comfort in that.
    “They didn’t know who was behind the door. They just needed to shove. But letting
     them see you flinch is like handing them a weapon—they’ll use it if they know it’s
     there.”
    I knew he was right. But skins didn’t thicken overnight, and realizing the only way
     to get my armor built up was to be verbally assaulted over and over was a defeating
     thought. Defeating and dehumanizing. Probably felt an awful lot like being locked
     in a psych ward. I sighed, and the exhalation made room for a measure of calm. I gulped
     it down like a quenching drink, thirsty for more.
    “How long have you worked on the ward?” I asked, just as Kelly pulled us onto a rural
     route, trees giving way to a vast stretch of fallow fields.
    “Four years. Four and a half.”
    “Is there a lot of turnover with the patients? Have any of them been there as long
     as you?”
    “Sure, two or three. Don and I came to the ward the same week, actually. Probably
     part of whatever bond we got going.”
    “How long do most patients wind up staying?”
    “’Til they’re better.”
    “On average?”
    “Couple weeks, maybe a month. Tough to say. Lots get on the right antipsychotic regimen,
     get better, get cleared, think they’re cured and go off their meds. Or they go home
     and get triggered by the same shit that landed them with us to begin with. So maybe
     a month, but then another month, and another . . . Some patients in Larkhaven have
     been institutionalized on and off for twenty years or more, but most don’t stay in
     the locked ward for longer than it takes for their drugs to kick in or their addictions
     to be treated.”
    “That’s good.”
    “Most patients don’t want to stay in a unit like ours long-term. They want their own
     clothes back. They want to be trusted with metal cutlery and get more visiting hours
     with their families, stand a chance at meeting a woman or seeing their loved ones
     with a bit more dignity. There are a few types like Don, though. Guys who thrive on
     the routine and the restrictions, real institutional cases. Or ones like Lonnie, who’ve
     been in and out so much, the ward has become their own little